THE first centre set up to battle diabetes in Hong Kong must be expanded and duplicated to make a real impact on deaths caused by the disease, experts warned yesterday.
The diabetes centre at Queen Mary Hospital opened yesterday in a bid to cut the number of people with life-threatening chronic diabetes and raise public awareness.
But with more than 250,000 diabetics in the territory, doctors said the opening of the centre must only be the beginning.
Chief of the hospital's endocrinology division Dr Karen Lam Siu-ling said: ''It is better that this centre has been opened late than not at all, although given the number of diabetics in Hong Kong we have got to have more centres like this.'' Diabetes, a disorder in which the body lacks insulin to make use of sugar, is a major health problem in Hong Kong with surveys suggesting that the prevalence of the disease is as high as 4.5 per cent among those over 20 and 10 per cent for those over 65.
Studies carried out at the University of Hong Kong have shown that a third of stroke patients have diabetes.
Diabetes is also the cause of end stage renal failure in 20 per cent of patients needing dialysis or kidney transplant and a major cause of lower limb amputation.
